Sail / Rigging Weight

[miketr]

OK I did some web searches and found nothing on weight of rigging, etc.  I looked through my books and found a reference that I was able to track down.  In the Sail vs. Steam section of "Birth of the Battleship: British Capital Ship Design 1870-1881 by John Beeler"  I found foot note about a study done on the relative merits of steam vs. sail propulsion done in the 19th century.

Journal of Royal United Services Institution No. 22, 1878 (pgs 530-55)

Through the wonder of Google books I found a copy of the study.

http://books.google.com.my/books?id=mkoaAAAAMAAJ&pg=PA530#v=onepage&q&f=false

On page 534 it says, "we know that masts, yards, sails and ballasts weighed together 520 tons..."

Ship in question is HMS Audacious (1869)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HMS_Audacious_%281869%29

The obvious question is how much is ballast and how much is sails, etc.  The ballast is going to be most of the weight but this because its needed to counter the movement effect of all the weight above the center of gravity.

See minutes of the debate that followed the paper, in particular page 554-555

Unknown ship had 12 tons of mast, sails, etc which required 50 tons of ballast to counter movement such weight generated.

So about 20% of the total weight of 62 tons is the above deck weight.  Going back to HMS Audacious and its 520 tons that would mean 104 tons of masts, rigging, etc.  There was another reference up in the journal that appears to confirm this 100 tons of weight figure for rigging, etc. 

520 tons comes to 8.66% of the displacement of a 6,000 ton ship. 

Perhaps in interest of KISS we do 1% displacement of ship be above deck weight for sails, etc and 4% be below decks ballast?  All for ships of full sail rig?

Michael

[Carthaginian]

So, the ballast is the big component that we've been missing this time! I can buy the need for some Big Damn Rocks^(R) being thrown aboard a ship increasing the weight so drastically.

Your chosen example, H.M.S. Audacious carried 23,700 sp. ft. of sail on a barque rig.
That yields- according to my formula in the other thread- a total of about 4.2 tons for sails (above deck). Add in 2/3 that much weight for spares (below decks) and you get right at 7 tons for just the cloth. This makes me say that you need only put 0.1% of the weight above decks rather than 1%... unless you are meaning to cause stability issues intentionally, in which case we might wish to rule that even more of the weight- perhaps half or even more- is above water.

H.M.S. Audacious might not be the best example, though, upon which to base an all encompassing formula. They were said to be very shallow of draft for their weight of sail, and had an alarming trend to heel to leeward while under full sail- possibly even exposing part of the unarmored hull below the belt! Thus, H.M.S. Audacious would likely require a rather large proportion of ballast to sail.

Damn fine work on finding this- I'm gonna spend the day trying to find another source we can compare things to. The more we find, the better an answer we can get.

[Valles]

Wiki has informed me in the past that at one point, a European consortium of adventurers bought a south Chinese Junk, the Keying, and sailed her across the Pacific, around South America, and into New York and London.

More relevantly, the article on same includes the interesting factoid that her battened mainsail, far heavier than European equivalents, weighed ten tons.

[miketr]

Read the article, the writer argues that idea that if sails and all related gear are discard then that weight is free to be used on coal storage.  They gave the weight of 520 tons combined, there is no exact break down between sails, mast, etc.  My number of 1% (sail, rigging, masts, all above center of gravity gear to sail the ship) is my attempt to extrapolate from the data.

Also the author of the article used Audacious in his example.

Michael 

[Carthaginian]

Wiki has informed me in the past that at one point, a European consortium of adventurers bought a south Chinese Junk, the Keying, and sailed her across the Pacific, around South America, and into New York and London.

More relevantly, the article on same includes the interesting factoid that her battened mainsail, far heavier than European equivalents, weighed ten tons.

Asian sailmaking were totally different. If you want a formula to work on junks, you'll need to look for junk-rigged ships.

Read the article, the writer argues that idea that if sails and all related gear are discard then that weight is free to be used on coal storage.  They gave the weight of 520 tons combined, there is no exact break down between sails, mast, etc.  My number of 1% (sail, rigging, masts, all above center of gravity gear to sail the ship) is my attempt to extrapolate from the data.

Also the author of the article used Audacious in his example.

Michael 

I understand that there was no breakdown... that is why I am trying to figure one out. :) If we can get 2-3 examples- or more, though I doubt that is likely- we will be able to come up with some kind of solid formula.
And I understand as well that you used the Audacious as an example because it was the ship the author used... what I was stating is that if another example might be found it could possibly be a better example of proper proportion of ballast to sail, due to the heeling problems that were noted in the article on Audacious.

[miketr]

Fair enough.

Michael

[Carthaginian]

http://dan.pfeiffer.net/boat/ratios.htm#BR

This has a lot of mathematic formula that I, honestly, can't understand- and which may well be for smaller ship... but some of those like P3D who seem to have a better grasp of engineering might be able to tell us more.


OK, NOW we are getting somewhere.
Pure sail ships... so keep in mind that weight of engines, coal, etc, would possibly mitigate the need from some of the ballast mentioned here. This table shows the average weights of all the equipment of various generic ship types at Trafalgar.
http://home.gci.net/~stall/tabFGH.htm
Note that a ship of 4,665 tons loaded needed about 0.7% of it's weight for sails, masts and rigging, and roughly a further 0.8% for ballast. This is pretty consistent with my 2% figure for a full sailing rig. The smaller single-deck frigate requires a bit more than this- about 1.14% weight in sail and rigging, and about 0.8% for ballast... but still pretty close to 2%.

[Nobody]

OK, NOW we are getting somewhere.
Pure sail ships... so keep in mind that weight of engines, coal, etc, would possibly mitigate the need from some of the ballast mentioned here. This table shows the average weights of all the equipment of various generic ship types at Trafalgar.
http://home.gci.net/~stall/tabFGH.htm
Note that a ship of 4,665 tons loaded needed about 0.7% of it's weight for sails, masts and rigging, and roughly a further 0.8% for ballast. This is pretty consistent with my 2% figure for a full sailing rig. The smaller single-deck frigate requires a bit more than this- about 1.14% weight in sail and rigging, and about 0.8% for ballast... but still pretty close to 2%.

Excuse me, but when I look at that website I find:

	120 gun ship		74 gun ship		36 gun frigate
Total Ordnance	529	11,34%	301	9,89%	131	9,03%
Masts, Sails, and Rig	321	6,88%	261	8,58%	165	11,38%
Boats	10	0,21%	10	0,33%	8	0,55%
Crew	102	2,19%	65	2,14%	27	1,86%
Provisions	296	6,35%	215	7,07%	69	4,76%
Fuel	100	2,14%	52	1,71%	32	2,21%
Water	410	8,79%	260	8,54%	110	7,59%
Ballast	373	8,00%	196	6,44%	108	7,45%
Hull	2524	54,11%	1683	55,31%	800	55,17%
Total Displacement	4665		3043		1450
Masts, Sails, and Rig and Ballast	694	14,88%	457	15,02%	273	18,83%

So that's nearly 15% to 19%! Not 2.

(P.S.: you seem to have made an error of one magnitude (factor of 10 that is))

[Carthaginian]

Now you know why I hate decimals. :P
My bad- You're right... they are calling for much larger figures than I thought. :-[

Though, once again, if you look at the engine weight of the later steam-powered vessels, they approach the kinds of percentages of weight that these figures demand for ballast. Also, later masts were not always solid wood- often, they were iron and wood composite masts, and wind up being lighter than a comparable solid mast.

Also, if we follow this, then we need to seriously look at composite strength requirements and tonnage of ships involved- this will completely kill off the adjustments in composite strength for hull materials.

I'm just glad I found something that gives us some good, solid ratios on a particular subject that's been causing a lot of questions lately. At least the question is answered. I'll shut the fuck up at this point and just go with whatever is decided.

[miketr]

There is a clear trend that bigger ships had less and less of their displacement devoted to sails, rigging, mast and ballast.  Audacious a 6,000 ton displacement ship had 8.67%.  There are a couple of reason I think for the drop in weight on higher displacement ships.

#1 Ships were intended to be slower so they carried less sail relative to hull size.

#2 Later ships had boilers etc, so they are in effect carrying permanent ballast.  Note that wooden ships in the table here had ballast being 6.4% to 8% vs. 5.3% for Audacious. 

#3 Later ships had masts made of iron so they were lighter masts / spars compared to older ships and that in turn required less ballast.

What I am interested in is a KISS system above all.

There two possible rig types.

The Full Rigged Ship (3 masted ship) or Brigantine / Brig (2 masted ship)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sail-plan#Types_of_ships

A full rigged ship can do up to 2/3 of SS hull speed (not ship engine speed but speed based on hull) Displacement costs being 1.5% misc weight above hull for Full Rigged Ship and 6.5% misc weight below deck.  On a 6,000 ton ship this comes out to 480 total misc tons.


A Brigantine can do 1/2 of SS hull speed.  Displacement costs being 1% Misc Weight above hull and 4% misc weight below deck.  On a 6,000 ton ship this comes out to 300 total misc tons.

Thoughts?

Michael

[Sachmle]

We'll probably never have an exact number, so in the name of KISS (and the fact that these are probably as close as we'll get) I say run with it.

[Tanthalas]

Honestly it dosnt realy matter for me... my Navy isnt going to be born untill 1860 so I intend to just skip the sail powerd ships era more or less compleatly.

[miketr]

Honestly it dosnt realy matter for me... my Navy isnt going to be born untill 1860 so I intend to just skip the sail powerd ships era more or less compleatly.

In 1860 your navy is going to be sail powered unless you intend to have no tradition of a blue water navy.   Just shallow draft coastal ironclads at best.

Michael

[Tanthalas]

Honestly it dosnt realy matter for me... my Navy isnt going to be born untill 1860 so I intend to just skip the sail powerd ships era more or less compleatly.

In 1860 your navy is going to be sail powered unless you intend to have no tradition of a blue water navy.   Just shallow draft coastal ironclads at best.

Michael

Untill the mid 1880s yeah more or less, im making copies of RN Breastwork Monitors.  I know it dosnt realy fit with the missions most nations give their navies, and Deseret will evolve their views as time progresses but untill around 1885 or so my navy will be realisticly a strictly coastal force with very limited blue watter capability.

[Walter]

Breastwork Monitors?? :o Good luck with simming those.